Tag Archives: Jeeves

It was pouring outside and screaming inside the day the butler showed up on the Jones’s doorstep. Well, not a butler per se, but a gentleman’s gentleman. Not that there were any gentlemen for Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick to serve in Carter’s house—not yet, anyway—but only Carter, his mom, and a bunch of younger sisters. And the reason why Carter is the only male in his house is the unfolding and sorrowful mystery of his story.

Like Jeeves stepping into Wooster’s dissolute life, Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick stepped into the Jones household and imposed calm and order. He made everyone tea and forced them to like it. He knew how to fix little girls’ hair, and, since Mom’s Jeep had broken down, he drove them all to school in a huge purple car that Carter called The Eggplant. As each child left the car, he brought his vast umbrella around, leaned down, and said, “Make good decisions and remember who you are.”

Carter is having a hard time remembering who he is since his dad has not come home from his military deployment for some time, and he seems to have stopped answering Carter’s emails. The sense of dread the reader feels as this situation develops creeps higher as the pages turn. Someone else is also missing from Carter’s life, but he works hard to avoid thinking about that.

Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick seems to know far more than is possible, but he plans to cure all of life’s ills with cricket. The game. He takes over Carter’s school’s front lawn, and somehow the coach is swept along with the butler’s unstoppable will. He plans practices on Saturdays, even though they take place at the same time as Ace Robotroid and the Robotroid Rangers. Soon the diverse student body seems to reside in the English countryside.

Gary Schmidt is a professor at Calvin College and one of the finest children’s authors around, and he always writes with a light and humorous hand that only highlights the heartbreak beneath. Children’s lives are filled with challenges every day: schoolwork, making friends, pleasing teachers and parents, and trying to figure out life as they go. When tragedies occur or the adults in their lives have major problems, the children carry these burdens inside themselves, too, even when they are expected to continue with their regular routine. Everyone needs a Jeeves to step in and straighten it all out.

Pay Attention, Carter Jones is fun, sweet, and deeply moving. It’s perfect for readers ten and up and anyone who wants to learn the intricacies of that marker of all that is good and noble in society: cricket.

Disclaimer: I read a library copy of this book. Opinions expressed are solely my own and may not reflect those of my employer or anyone else.